- DB
Games | Top Three Games of 2018
2018 may still have a week and a half left, but there's no chance of me playing another game released this year and being able to provide a reasonable judgement of it. There are games that came out this year that I haven't had the chance to get to, but there will be no retro-active adjustments.
Also, the reason there's only three is simply because I haven't played enough games released in 2018 to do a top ten and three gives a nice bronze/silver/gold feel to it, rather than something strange like four or six.
Now that's out of the way, it's time for the first of the games as I do list in reverse order, starting with the bronze medal winner...
3rd - God of War
I wasn't a big fan of the original group of God of War games, so had no real attachment to the series coming in to this game and actually, if anything, had an almost negative view of the series as a whole for this particular title to overcome.
But overcome it God of War did, with Kratos and his son, Atreus, continuing to press forward in their quest as the game continued to impress me. It looks and sounds amazing, the combat is fantastic, and the story is superb.
2nd - Detroit: Become Human
This is the only game listed here that I played through more than once, enjoying it both times and those two play-throughs being in fairly close proximity to each other to boot. I think that's the first time I've played a game to completion twice in such a short space of time since Batman: Arkham Asylum.
And the thing with Detroit: Become Human, is that I know there are still entire sequences I haven't seen yet thanks to the brilliant choice to show your choices on a flow chart at the end of each section. I fully intend to play through this game at least twice more and that should be recommendation enough for how much I enjoyed this game.
1st - Assassin's Creed: Odyssey
First off, I have to admit that I haven't actually finished playing this game yet, but I'm enjoying it so much that I still have no hesitation in naming it my game of the year for 2018. I'm over 65 hours in and I'm not bored or coming anywhere close to losing interest yet.
Just for comparison, God of War took up 33 hours of my time and that was just about enough for me - much more and it's length would've been a negative. Assassin's Creed: Odyssey is such a joy to play though, that I can't see it becoming an issue.
I don't want to go into too much detail here as I will do a full review when I finally finish (which I'm expecting to be past the 100-hour mark), but one thing I appreciate is that the game is designed in such a way that it feels like it respects the player's time.
It's just as easy to start the game and do a couple of minor side objectives as it is to sit down and play for hours - with both feeling equally satisfying. And I love playing as Kassandra, with Melissanthi Mahut's performance making the character one of my favourites of recent years.
Assassin's Creed: Odyssey looks, sounds and plays brilliantly. The central story is great, the smaller plots and side stories just as good, the characters are near-universally brilliant in both writing and performance and I'm happy to keep playing this for dozens and dozens and dozens of hours more.
It's on the verge of toppling Brotherhood as my favourite game in the series depending on how the main story plays out, and is definitely my favourite game of this size since The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. I'm having so much fun with that it simply has to be my game of the year for 2018.
